The Human Rights Council opened its summer session in Geneva on Monday. Once again, nations will turn their attention to the rights of women, migrants, Indigenous peoples, LGBTQI and other marginalized groups. But even for a body accustomed to crises, the Geneva-based council – and the whole UN human rights machinery – is bracing for one of a whole other magnitude.

Shortened speaking slots and debates axed from the program are only the visible tip of a liquidity iceberg threatening to sink the entire system. Behind the scenes, the human rights mechanisms that underpin the council are struggling to stay afloat.

Like other UN departments, the Human Rights Council has been ordered to trim spending. Its bureau responded by limiting speaking time and scrapping certain debates, shortening the session by two and a half days and saving roughly CHF 250,000 (about $370,000), according to Swiss Ambassador Jurg Lauber, the current chair of the body.

The moves did not go well with nongovernmental organizations. Phil Lynch, executive director of the Geneva-based International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), warns that removing general debates “disproportionately affects civil society,” which relies on longer and more flexible formats to plead their causes. In a forum where words can be wielded like swords, these details matter.

Lauber himself lamented the loss of airtime for speakers, noting debates are an “essential instrument” of the UN body and diplomacy. The problem, he thinks, requires a structural approach to reconcile the mismatch between the Council’s ever-expanding agenda – no less than 70 expert reports are slated for presentation this session – and the increasingly limited resources available. “We need to look again at how we fulfill the mandate, how we can do it, maybe in a more focused way,” he said at a press conference on June 11.

Among the options: merging mandates of UN experts with overlapping remits and reducing the number of resolutions. But that is a longstanding goal that risks running aground on political realities – initiatives often bear the fingerprints of their sponsoring states.

While supporting a reform and conceding the need for some streamlining, citing “too many resolutions,” one European diplomat warned the process could also play straight into the hands of those countries long allied in efforts to dismantle pesky human rights probes, particularly those shining a light on their own abuses.

Lynch of ISHR is unconvinced by the calls for efficiency and rationalization, especially as crises are escalating. He recalls that the UN’s troubles can be traced back to member states “not paying their assessed contributions in full and on time.” The United States, its biggest contributor, has suspended all mandatory payments and ongoing donations since January, while China has also been dragging its feet paying its dues. The US’s retreat from the Human Rights Council – politically and financially – makes matters worse. A White House proposal is asking Congress to ban US funds from supporting the Council.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which supports the dozens of UN experts mandated by the Council, is inevitably also feeling the pinch. Its chief, Volker Turk, said a $60 million shortfall after the UN Secretariat was only able to provide 73 per cent of its approved regular budget was preventing him from staffing “11 countries with a human rights presence” this year. The dismantlement of USAID and other traditional donors scaling back their voluntary contributions, which made up last year 60 percent of the UN rights office’s total income, adds further strain.

As part of the broader UN push to slash expenses, Turk is planning to move some 120 Geneva staff to cheaper regional hubs like Vienna, Beirut and Panama City. The move has drawn outcry from staff, particularly in Geneva.

Addressing the changes under consideration, Lynch recognized the need to deploy people on the ground, but also that “the office maintains a strong secretariat in Geneva so it can support the human rights system.”

Still, some decisions are out of Turk’s hands. UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s reform initiative, UN80, foresees a 20 percent job cut across Secretariat departments, including the Human Rights Office. But this has raised concerns. At a meeting with Guy Ryder, the head of the reform process, Latin American states called for a more balanced distribution of funding between the human rights pillar and the UN’s other core mandates. While human rights receive just around four percent of the regular budget, peace and security and development enjoy a far larger share.

But such a move would require broad support from member states, including those actively trying to defund it. The European diplomat, who took part in the meeting, recalled the staunch opposition from certain countries that have sought to defund human rights mechanisms in New York budget discussions.

“At the very least, cuts shouldn’t be applied uniformly across the system – it is essential to have a comprehensive reflection because the different pillars are already not on an equal footing,” the diplomat said, echoing the sentiment that that “the UN80 reform should be used to strengthen the human rights pillar.”

The belt-tightening isn’t just affecting diplomatic forums like the Human Rights Council – field work has also taken a hit. According to figures from the UN Human Rights Office, special procedures, meaning the Council’s independent experts, conducted 57 country visits last year, down from 82 in 2023, after being ordered to halve their annual missions. Investigation teams also remain understaffed, hobbled by a yearlong hiring freeze.

Treaty bodies, which oversee states’ compliance with human rights conventions, are also struggling.

“Let’s face it. We are drowning,” said Michal Balcerzak, chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, speaking at a June meeting of committee chairs. “We’re fighting for survival,” another one echoed at the encounter, wondering whether the human rights system would last.

The human rights bodies have seen their preliminary sessions – which one chair described as key for exchanges with NGOs – entirely canceled, and one of their three annual sessions will also be forgone this year due to insufficient funds. The subcommittee on the prevention of torture, which conducts rare prison visits, said it hadn’t been able to conduct any field visits so far this year and had no certainty whether any would go ahead, with the exception of two. All this will add to an already huge backlog of complaints and pending examinations, the experts fretted.

“This is not just technical,” Lynch said. “This has real-world implications. It means that human rights violations and abuses go undocumented and perpetrators enjoy impunity.”

NGOs are also bearing the brunt, with many affected by the funding crisis having to reconsider traveling to Geneva, according to Lynch. Even online access could be at risk. One of the proposals that has been floated is to eliminate the UN’s webcast, which livestreams all of the UN’s public meetings worldwide, including the Council’s, but the idea was quickly shot down by states.

In the next three weeks, one of the resolutions the Council will be considering addresses the issue of civil society space. ISHR hopes it will “call attention to the funding crisis facing independent civil society . . . and encourage states and other stakeholders to increase their sustainable investment in and funding for independent civil society.”

Olivier de Frouville, chair of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, who headed the meeting, put it bluntly: “The crisis is less a question of the organization’s finances but one of the commitment of states to international law and international institutions. The real crisis we are confronting is a moral and political crisis.”

This article was reposted courtesy of Geneva Solutions under Creative Commons BY 4.0.